| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail/Home shopping |
| Founded | 1 November 2005 (1923 as Littlewoods Pools) |
| Headquarters | Speke, Liverpool, Merseyside, England |
| Key people | David and Frederick Barclay (Owners) Mark Newton-Jones (Chief Executive)[1] |
| Products | Clothing Electronics Home furnishings |
| Revenue | £2.1 billion |
| Employees | 10,500[2][3] |
| Subsidiaries | Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited, Everyday Financial Solutions Limited, Home Delivery Network Limited (HDNL)/Yodel, Optimum Contact Solutions Limited, CDMS Limited, Woolworths. |
| Website | www.shopdirect.co.uk/ |
| References: Business Information | |
Shop Direct Group is the United Kingdom's leading online retailer, and its largest home shopping company.[2][4] It is based in the Speke area of the city of Liverpool, in Merseyside, England. Established in November 2005 as a result of a merger of the former Littlewoods and Shop Direct companies, the retailer was known as the Littlewoods Shop Direct Group until a corporate rebranding in May 2008.
A business group trading via several catalogues and websites, Shop Direct traces its roots to a variety of mail order companies in northern England, particularly Littlewoods, the football pools and mail order business founded by John Moores, as well as the Manchester based home shopping business of Great Universal Stores. These companies were purchased by Sir David and Frederick Barclay in 2003,[4] and a major business restructuring took place leading to a merger of two companies that had "been arch rivals for the best part of 100 years".[5]
Since the merger of what had been struggling businesses in 2005, ongoing restructuring and modernisation of the company has resulted in the Shop Direct Group emerging as the leading online retailer within the British Isles. Its traditional paper-based and phone-in orders system has been superseded by electronic commerce technology.[3] In 2009 Shop Direct Group acquired the brand name of the failed Woolworths, and have stated they plan to amalgamate the business into its existing home shopping network.
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Shop Direct Group traces its roots to a variety of independent mail order and retail companies in northern England, particularly Littlewoods, the pools and mail order business founded by John Moores, as well as Manchester based home shopping business of Great Universal Stores. Other businesses from this time now part of Shop Direct include Kays Catalogues.
Founded by John Moores and his brother Cecil in 1923, Littlewoods was initially a football pools company, which used its network of pools agents and printing company (founded in 1928) to establish itself as a catalogue retailer from 1932 onwards.
The success of the catalogue shopping business led to the opening of a Littlewoods high street department store in Blackpool in 1937.
In October 2001, Littlewoods became the owner of Swan electronics.
In November 2002 the Moores family sold Littlewoods to the Barclay brothers for £750 million.
Littlewoods also owned the Index chain of stores.
The home shopping/catalogues business of Argos and Homebase owner, GUS plc, ARG Equation (including Great Universal, Kays, Choice and Marshall Ward) was de-merged and bought by the Barclay brothers in 2003, where it became Shop Direct.
In March 2005, following a 20 year history in which it had never made a profit, it was announced that part of the Index chain of catalogue shops was to be sold to Argos, and the remainder was to be closed.[6]
In July 2005 Associated British Foods purchased the 120 branch Littlewoods retail chain on behalf of its retail subsidiary Primark for £409 million. Some of the stores were converted into branches of Primark, and the remainder are being were sold on to other retailers. The Littlewoods name disappeared from the British high street in March 2006.
Following these disposals, and clearance from the Competition Commission, the Littlewoods home shopping business was formally merged with that of Shop Direct (the GUS plc home shopping business) in October 2005, to form the United Kingdom's largest home shopping business. The merger was in reality effected in early 2004 when work started on a business optimisation programme, consolidating various business functions.
Following the merger, Littlewoods Shop Direct Group moved their headquarters from Manchester city centre to Skyways House in Speke, south Liverpool.[7]
The then newly appointed Chief Executive Mark Newton-Jones said the merger had "been the biggest challenge of all – taking two companies that have been arch rivals for the best part of 100 years and bringing them together. Not just from an operational point of view, but also two different business cultures".[5]
In May 2008 Littlewoods Shop Direct Group announced it would change its corporate brand name to Shop Direct Group, to reflect the multi branded nature of the business.[8] This was following some bad press to the Littlewoods aspect to the business. In July 2008 Shop Direct completed its purchase of the Empire Stores brand name and customer base from mail order competitor Redcats.
On 30 April 2009 Shop Direct closed its call centre in Crosby, Merseyside, making over 1,000 people redundant. The reason given was the shift in business from traditional home shopping practices to online shopping. In addition 400 staff based at Head Office, in Speke as well as staff from other sites would also be made redundant.[9]
With the demise of the Woolworths Group in January 2009[10], Shop Direct purchased rights to children's clothing brand Ladybird along with the Woolworths trade name from the administrators.[1][11]The takeover of the Woolworths brand by Shop Direct was announced on 2 February 2009,[12]and the new online retailer began trading on 25 June that year.[13]
At the start of 2009, Shop Direct predicted growth in online sales; a spokesman said "We anticipate that 70 per cent of our sales will be online by 2010/11 and, therefore, the future of our business is online-led".[2] It was confirmed in late 2009 that it was on track to achieve 70% of its sales via the internet by 2011.[3] Exactly 1 year and 1 day after the Crosby site was formally given notice of closure, Shop Direct Group announced the closure of call centres at Newtown, Sunderland and Burnley with the loss of over 1,200 jobs.
On 27 October it was announced that the former Woolworths store that reopened under the name Wellworths was forced to change its name after opposition by Shop Direct. Initially Shop Direct had supported the new venture.[14] [15]
As well as its core home shopping business, Shop Direct Group owns and operates a financial services business, formerly known as Everyday Financial Solutions, and now known as Shop Direct Financial Services, which is the consolidated brand under which Littlewoods and Shop Direct's finance arms were merged.
The Group's contact centre company, formerly known as Optimum Contact Solutions, is now known as Shop Direct Contact Solutions.
Home Delivery Network Limited (HDNL) is the Group's logistics arm, the result of the merger between Business Express and Reality, the former Littlewoods and Shop Direct delivery companies respectively.[16] As well as delivering home shopping for the Group's brands, also delivers for Tesco Direct, Amazon.co.uk, dabs.com, The Book People, Virgin Wines and other third parties.[17]
Following a takeover of DHL's UK domestic B2B and B2C arm, HDNL rebranded itself as Yodel.[18][19] Yodel received much negative publicity in December 2011 for many instances of poor performance.[20][21] Yodel ascribed the failures to unexpectedly high demand.[22]
Transactis is the Group's printing, direct marketing and publishing company.[23]
Shop Direct Group operates a variety of home shopping brands, consisting of the former Littlewoods brands and the former Shop Direct brands (Additions Direct, Abound, Great Universal, Marshall Ward, Choice, and Kays). A sports website, called sport-e.com was also opened by the group in 2003. The 'Littlewoods Direct' brand was formerly known as 'LX Direct' and 'Littlewoods Xtra'. The shop provides a range of items ranging from clothing and jewellery to electrical goods and appliances. Fashion advisors Trinny and Susannah are currently the faces of Littlewoods. They fronted Littlewoods when orders rose thirty per cent during its sponsorship of their ITV1 programme Trinny & Susannah Undress in 2006.[24] As of January 2007, they have also provided twelve pages of fashion advice within the Littlewoods catalogue and also produced a booklet called The Golden Rules, which was distributed to all Littlewoods customers with fashion advice aimed to suit all body shapes.[24] They have also compiled guidelines aimed at customers searching online, who are then able to type-in their body measurements and get instant advice on which Littlewoods clothing is suitable with accordance to their figure. The duo have also launched their own clothing range with Littlewoods. Littlewoods also own Littlewoods Direct, Marshall Ward, Additions Direct, Choice and Kays.
Shop Direct Group's headquarters is Skyways House, "a new state-of-the-art head office", a £31 million renovated aircraft hangar, situated in Speke, south Liverpool.[25][26] The Speke site also houses a computer data centre. The group sold the original Littlewoods Head Office in Liverpool (SJMB) to Bruntwood Estates. They retained a single floor in that building due to lack of space in Speke, but moves planned for the end of November and early December 2007 will relocate the remaining staff to the Speke head office site. It also has a data centre adjacent to The Plaza (SJMB as was) and has other offices in Manchester although these are due to close by mid 2007.
Mail order processing for Shop Direct Group broadly takes place in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, particularly at the Shaw National Distribution Centre, a warehousing and returns centre in Shaw and Crompton, Greater Manchester.[1] It comprises three former cotton mills and a number of state-of-the-art stock handling facilities, and is supported by strong geographic positioning and well served local transport links. It is one of Europe's largest retail distribution centres.[1] Shop Direct Group processes returns at Raven Mill in Chadderton, which it uses for processing returned goods.
On 9 May 2006, the company announced the closure of three warehouses in Eccles, Wigan and Worcester. These closures have taken place, with all operations being transferred to their Shaw and Crompton site. Around 1,200 jobs were lost from the closures, but further jobs were created at the Shaw National Distribution Centre.[27]
Shop Direct operates call centres in Aintree, Bolton, Preston, Newtown and Worcester.
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